Expensive. Shallow keyboard. Slippery touchpad. Only 57GB of 128GB SSD available at startup. VGA and HDMI dongles not included.

Bottom Line

Samsung gets a jump on Apple's anticipated 15-inch MacBook Air with the super-slim and -sexy Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US).

Last year—before Intel launched its ultrabook initiative—Samsung staked a claim to the thinnest Windows laptop with the 13.3-inch Samsung Series 9 (since replaced by an even slimmer 2012 model). This year Samsung has thin-sliced another executive status symbol with the Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US) ($1,499 list), which the company claims is almost 50 percent more compact than any existing 15-inch laptop. Samsung doesn't call it an ultrabook, but at 3.6 pounds and 0.6 inch thick, the new Series 9 (NP900X4B-A02US) is barely heavier than many 13.3-inch ultrabooks—and makes systems that meet Intel's 0.83-inch-thick guideline for 15-inch ultrabooks, such as the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3-581TG, look chubby.

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It also makes us a little unsure how to classify it; except for its larger screen, the Series 9 15-inch's ultrabook-like components keep it from qualifying as a true desktop replacement like our Editors' Choice Samsung Series 7 Chronos (NP700Z5A-S03) ($1,299 list, 4 stars) or the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (late 2011) ($1,799 direct, 4 stars). Probably the new Series 9's closest competitor is HP's Envy 14 Spectre ($1,399.99 direct, 4 stars), which offers the same Intel Core i5 processor, 128GB solid-state drive, and 1,600-by-900 screen resolution, albeit in a screen one inch smaller. Like the Spectre, the Series 9 15-inch is a way to stand out from the ultrabook crowd, even as ultrabooks stand out from the laptop crowd.

DesignThe Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US) boasts an aluminum one-piece shell in a handsome shade— Samsung calls it Titan Silver—with a touch of dark blue. It measures 0.6 by 14 by 9.3 inches (HWD), with an ample palm rest and space on either side of the black tile keyboard.

The keyboard has dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys but no numeric keypad. It offers a tolerable typing feel, but shallower travel than the Spectre and some other thicker systems' keyboards, and is backlit, but quite dimly—we had trouble detecting the backlight in all but the darkest environments. The large touchpad has clickable lower corners instead of dedicated mouse buttons; it has a smooth, almost slippery feel. Annoyingly, it occasionally failed to register our taps on the touchpad surface, but a driver update during our testing helped.

The 15.0-inch display is not dim or dark in the slightest—it's impressively bright even with the backlight dialed down a notch, with a matte finish, sharp contrast, and crisp colors as well as the extra resolution (1,600 by 900 versus 1,366 by 768) that's a real treat for multitaskers or image editors and unavailable on 13.3-inch ultrabooks except for the Asus Zenbook UX31-RSL8 ($1,049 list, 4 stars). Impressively for such a thin system, the screen shows next to no flex or wobble when grasped by the corners, as opposed to more bendy ultrabooks such as the Toshiba Portege Z835-P370.

FeaturesSamsung earns kudos for including an SD card slot—hidden behind a nifty folding door on the laptop's right side—and three USB ports—two USB 3.0 on the right and one USB 2.0 on the left. Other ports are miniaturized, with a micro Ethernet port (dongle included) and micro HDMI port (dongle not included) on the left and a micro VGA port (dongle not included) on the right. In case you haven't guessed, the super-skinny Samsung has no optical drive.

Wireless connectivity options include the trifecta of 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi), but not the Intel Smart Connect technology that lets the HP Envy 14 Spectre and Dell XPS 13 ($999.99 direct, 4 stars) update e-mail, social network, and other information while the system sleeps.

Samsung backs the Series 9 15-inch with a one-year warranty, and fills its 128GB SSD—all but a scanty 57GB of it out of the box—with an array of helpful system-settings utilities, 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security, Skype, the WildTangent games suite, and a recovery partition. The system's cold boot times, helped by a Fast Boot utility that turns off Windows 7's startup animation, averaged a blazing 17 seconds and its resume-from-sleep times 2.5 seconds by our stopwatch.

Performance The Series 9 15-inch has the same 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M processor as numerous other ultrabooks ranging from the Dell XPS 13 to our Editors' Choice HP Folio 13, but teams it with 8GB of memory instead of the usual 4GB. That helped it post an impressive PCMark 7 performance score of 3,611, topping the other Core i5-2467M ultrabooks we've tested (such as the Folio 13 at 3,146 and Envy Spectre at 3,221). The Samsung also wins the Core i5-2467M class crown in our Handbrake video encoding and Adobe Photoshop CS5image editing tests, with times of 2 minutes 28 seconds and 5 minutes 20 seconds, respectively.

Like other systems with Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated graphics, the NP900X4B-A02US is no choice for serious gamers, struggling to around 18 frames per second apiece in our Lost Planet 2 (DirectX 9) and Crysis (DirectX 10) tests. It finished half a step behind the MacBook Air 13-inch (4,781 versus 4,561) in the 3DMark06 graphics benchmark.

Speaking of full-sized 15-inch laptops, can the Samsung Series 9 15-inch replace one? It's a tempting proposition—we can't emphasize enough that this machine is just marvelously thin and light, every bit the showpiece that the 13.3-inch Series 9 is. On the other hand, if your workload involves serious number-crunching or video encoding, you'll probably choose to carry a slimline laptop's one or two extra pounds rather than settle for what amounts to the performance of an ultrabook.

By contrast, if your workload centers on office productivity suitable for an ultrabook, your choice will come down to the Samsung's big, bright screen versus some ultrabooks' better keyboards and full-sized ports. The latter factors, and its lower price, keep the HP Folio 13 in place as our ultrabook Editors' Choice, but the Series 9 15-inch joins the HP Envy 14 Spectre as a premium alternative.

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About the Author

Formerly editor-in-chief of Home Office Computing, Eric Grevstad is a contributing editor for PCMag and Computer Shopper, where he earlier served as lead laptop analyst and executive editor, respectively. A tech journalist since the TRS-80 and Apple II days, Grevstad specializes in lightweight laptops, all-in-one desktops, and productivity software... See Full Bio

Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900...

Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US)

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